I spend a decent amount of time crawling around the corners of the internet looking for fly fishing content worth sharing, and every now and then something lands in my feed that really draws me down a rabbit hole. Box of Rain, a Substack from someone who goes by CosmicJohn, was one of those finds, and has become a favorite read over the past year.
Unlike many of the online authors I follow, I don’t know CosmicJohn from back in the glory days of fly fishing blogging, but he is clearly a guy who has put in some serious time on the water, and he writes like someone who’s earned the right to have opinions. His entries are paradoxically both long in length and blunt in message, but not in an obnoxious way. Just in the way of someone who’s actually been there, done that, and has the stories and knowledge to back it up. He’s fished the Delaware, Mossy Creek in Virginia, the Colorado River, followed the Grateful Dead, worked in a fly shop, guided, earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering (yes, really), and somehow wove all of it into a perspective on fly fishing that feels genuinely different from what you normally read.
Check out a few of these posts:
“Trout Riseforms” is a deep dive in something I honestly never gave much thought to. CosmicJohn essentially dismantles the conventional wisdom around what a rise form tells you about what a trout is eating and concludes, with some well-earned confidence, that it tells you absolutely nothing. A rise form can dictate presentation, but not pattern. (The article is long, but a fascinating read).
“Click Pawl Reels” didn’t do much to persuade me that I don’t need another fly reel. I’m a sucker for clickers and he has some beauties! He traces his relationship with click & pawl reels back to his first fish on his father’s Hardy LRH Lightweight, and works his way through the Hardy Perfect, the Bouglé, and the Orvis CFO with a fellow gearhead’s affection. Lovely photography too.
“Fishing Small Trout Streams” is a practical and well-observed breakdown of what makes small water fishing unique. Things like structure, the holding lies, and undercut banks. Like the other articles, he goes deep into the subject. The guy should really write a book. As a small stream junkie, I learned a ton from this entry.
And then there’s a multi-entry series on dry flies, which goes deep, deep, deeeeep on patterns, hooks, materials… and a side piece called “Trout Visual Acuity”, which is a science-backed argument that trout basically can’t see well enough to justify paranoia around realistic fly tying patterns and tippet size. Phew…
Anyway, Box of Rain is hosted on Substack, but it’s free. It’s awesome. Even better if you’re a Deadhead. Go read it, go subscribe, and tell CosmicJohn I sent you.